Supposedly made for $218 (minus final post-production costs
and the blowup to 35mm for theatrical distribution, of course), Caouette’s
debut documentary is an example of film as therapy. It suggests
that computer editing technology is about to launch a whole new genre
of autobiographical work. (He edited TARNATION himself on iMovies, the
problem included for free with Macs.) A dense assemblage of home movies
and newly shot images, it’s also filled with wall-to-wall music.
Early on, Caouette seems to have thrown together all the footage he had,
regardless of its relationship to the soundtrack or larger meaning. Still,
he digs up some amazing material, especially a chilling performance by
his 11-year-old self as an abused housewife. His mother’s mental problems,
especially after an overdose of antidepressants, become the subject
of the film’s final half. She’s an unforgettable character. TARNATION
is sometimes a bit narcissistic, but there’s a real charge to Caouette’s
auto-psychoanalysis.Distributed by Wellspring. Opens in New York October
6 . UNDERTOW (David Gordon Green) **1/2

Green is a keen observer of everyday life, but he’s not much
of a storyteller. The most narrative-oriented of his three films, UNDERTOW
depicts a single father, John (Dermot Mulroney), raising two sons, Chris
(Jamie Bell) and Tim (Devon Alan), on his hog farm. Their lives are thrown
into chaos when his convict brother Deel (Josh Lucas) drops by. This
film comes close to being a thriller, but whether by temperament or lack
of chops, Green rarely plays it for suspense. Instead, he includes leisurely
scenes of meals or Chris and Tim digging around a junkyard. These moments
ring true, but the big picture feels like secondhand Southern Gothic. (The
occasional religious references are particularly half-assed.) THE RETURN
created a parable about fathers, sons and the road that worked seamlessly
on both a surface and mythic level; Green strives for an American counterpart,
drawing on Charles Laughton’s NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and co-producer Terrence
Malick, but doesn’t quite get there. Distributed by UA. Opens in New York October 22.INFERNAL AFFAIRS 2 (Andrew Lau/Alan Mak,
Hong Kong) ***

For the first time since the ‘80s, the NYFF has taken an interest
in Hong Kong genre films (long after their hipness quotient expired)
over the past two years. The INFERNAL AFFAIRS trilogy (whose first installment
is about to be released by Miramax) is a much better choice than Johnnie
To’s mediocre PTU, shown last year. Lau and Mak’s sensibility - and tendency
to blow up B-movie material to ambitious proportions - recalls Michael
Mann, but they never value style over substance or get too pretentious.
(Granted, I don’t really understand the references to Taoist hell.) A
prequel to INFERNAL AFFAIRS, INFERNAL AFFAIRS 2 begins in 1991 and ends
on the day of Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China. It sets up the
series’ basic situation: a cop, played here by Shawn Yue, infiltrates a
gang, who have placed a mole in the police force. This isn’t an action film.
Its violence is sudden and jarring, rather than artfully choreographed.
Instead, it’s a somber reflection on family and betrayal. While the protagonists
are played by a new set of actors, the whole cast, including Eric Tsang as
the crime boss, is quite impressive. INFERNAL AFFAIRS 1 & 2 don’t quite
live up to comparisons to THE GODFATHER, but they’re certainly signs of
hope in a Hong Kong film landscape that’s lately been looking barren.

No distributor. MILES ELECTRIC: A DIFFERENT KIND OF BLUE
(Murray Lerner) ***

For its first half, MILES ELECTRIC is a fairly standard documentary,
although Lerner put some real thought into its look. Relying
heavily on interviews, he stylizes them by having musicians introduce
themselves by playing Miles riffs and pose against a blank white background.
He spoke to Miles’ sidemen and fans like Carlos Santana and Joni Mitchell,
as well as nay-sayer Stanley Crouch. Miles’ 1970-5 period continues
to be controversial: conservative jazz books often cite the fractured
funk of 1972’s ON THE CORNER as his worst album. MILES ELECTRIC makes
the best possible case for its merits by showing a lengthy performance
in front of 600,000 people at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. (Lerner
has made several other films based around Isle of Wight footage.) The music
is astonishing. Seemingly an unstructured jam, flippantly named “Call
It Anything” by Miles, it layers his passionate solos over a powerful backdrop
of electric keyboards, bass, drums and Latin percussion. When Lerner cuts
back to interviews afterwards, the comedown is unavoidable, although Santana’s
New Age claims that Miles’ music created “multidimensional consciousness”
suddenly ring true. Essential viewing for Miles fans, and I hope it might
convert spectators who’ve never heard IN A SILENT WAY or BITCHES BREW.

NOTRE MUSIQUE echoes other Godard films, especially ORIGIN
OF THE 21ST CENTURY, FOR EVER MOZART and NOUVELLE VAGUE, but it brings
a mellower, more measured mood than usual. (Appearing as himself, Godard
gives his least grumpy performance ever.) It opens with “Hell,” a well-edited
10-minute montage of real and fictional war footage, moves into “Purgatory,”
an hour-long segment set at a literary conference in Sarajevo (with several
writers playing themselves) and ends up in “Heaven,” which lies in the
Swiss countryside. Politically, it’s far more thoughtful than the America-bashing
of IN PRAISE OF LOVE: a lucid meditation on the conflicts in Israel
and the former Yugoslavia. Godard achieves more with a few photos
than Michael Moore could in two hours. As with much late Godard,
the dialogue is made up largely of quotations, but they’re allusive rather
than didactic or cheaply provocative. (Best line:”He who kills another
man in defense of his ideas has not defended his ideas, but has killed
a man.”) The film’s most potent when it shows the intersection of natural
beauty and human cruelty. Godard has directed few scenes as moving as
the one in which a phone call revealing a character’s tragic fate is followed
by a tracking shot over flowers. This paradox, which dominated NOUVELLE
VAGUE, comes to a head in “Heaven,” where paradise is guarded by
U.S. Marines. (This image will be especially resonant for New Yorkers,
who’ve seen Uzi-toting soldiers guarding our subway stations on and off
for the past 18 months.) NOTRE MUSIQUE unites the spiritual, philosophical
and political undercurrents in Godard’s work, achieving a brilliant synthesis
and real urgency. Distributed by Wellspring. Opens in New York November
24.TROPICAL MALADY (Apichatpong Weerasethakul,
Thailand) ***

TROPICAL MALADY comes in 2 parts, complete with a separate title
and credit sequence for the second, united by the presence of the same
character. In the first, a soldier falls in love with a farm boy,
while the second chronicle his night in a forest, tracking down a tiger
that may be a human spirit. Like MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON, TROPICAL MALADY
starts off in the realm of the banal, using it as a springboard for myth
and metaphysics. Unfortunately, the 2 sections, while powerful in their
own right, don’t gel cohesively. It’s easy to interpret the second as a
metaphor for the protagonists’ love, but nothing in their tentative, fairly
casual relationship justified its tense, obsessive and (literally) dark
tone. Superficially, this has more subtext than BLISSFULLY YOURS, which
opened in New York last week, but both films attempt new forms of narrative
to express passion, suggesting that straightforward romance is dead
in the water. (In this, it’s a kissing cousin to ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE
SPOTLESS MIND.) I think BLISSFULLY YOURS, which opened in New York
last week, does it more successfully, although the problem of representing
passion may be the ultimate subject of TROPICAL MALADY. Weerasethakul was
smart to make a gay love story this time around: as Scott Tobias wrote,
“Thank goodness it has homoerotic undertones; otherwise, I doubt it could
find a distributor.”Distributed by Strand Releasing. Opens in early 2005
.
KINGS AND QUEEN (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
***

In MY SEX LIFE...OR HOW I GOT INTO AN ARGUMENT, Desplechin took
the stereotypical French art film - with all its navel-gazing conversations
about love and philosophy - and created something new by expanding it
to epic proportions. KINGS AND QUEEN does much the same with melodrama,
to lesser effect. It interweaves the stories of Nora (Emanuelle Devos),
who’s coping with a dying father, and her ex-boyfriend Ismael (Mathieu
Amalric), a musician committed to a mental hospital against his will. Desplechin’s
interest in theatricality and the nature of acting, evident in ESTHER KAHN
and PLAYING “IN THE COMPANY OF MEN,” is replaced by a fascination with the
possibilities of editing, both on a macro (flashbacks) and micro (jump cuts
within scenes) level. Death is everywhere here, but the film’s ultimately
optimistic and witty. However, it feels lopsided, since Ismael is so much
more colorful and interesting than Nora, whose narrative is drained
of life and humor in comparison. I can’t explain the grocery store robbery
scene except to wonder if Desplechin somehow wanted to prove that he likes
Tarantino as much as Rohmer and Eustache. His directorial skill remains strong,
but his material - and command of tonal shifts - is shaky, more soap opera
than literature.Distributed by Wellspring. No release date set yet
.
OR (MY TREASURE) (Keren Yedaya, Israel)
**1/2

I can see why Yedaya’s debut won the Camera D’Or at Cannes last May.
Visually, it’s a striking film. She may be the first director influenced
by the look of pan-and-scan VHS. (However, OR is shot on film.) Her framing
is deliberately cramped and uncomfortably intimate. Characters often
stand on the edge of the screen, with only a portion of their bodies
visible. Yedaya is uncommonly sensitive to her chosen aspect ratio, 1.66.
Unfortunately, OR falls flat as a piece of storytelling. It centers around
the relationship between Ruthie (Ronit Elkabetz), a middle-aged hooker,
and her teen daughter Or (Dana Ivgy.) In their household, the roles are
reversed: Or acts like a parent towards her slacker mom. The twin demons
of moralism and miserabilism eventually make their presence felt, leading
Or down a path that doesn’t ring true to her behavior and attitudes. The
film’s view of prostitution is odd: it sees it as a kind of addiction or
communicable disease, rather than a job women turn to out of poverty. Yedaya
may be a feminist, but she mystifies the world’s oldest profession as much
as any middle-aged guy in love with hookers with hearts of gold.

THE ASTRONOMER’S DREAM, made on video (like THE COLLECTOR), turned
out to be the highlight of this program. Its images are squeezed and distorted
until they resemble a bar code, but the effect occasionally lifts to reveal
something that looks like a ‘30s Hollywood costume drama. The music and
sound design implies drama and emotion, but all we see are light fluctuations.
The struggle to interpret them and adjust to their rhythms becomes fascinating.
Except for the silent PRECARIOUS GARDEN, all of these shorts pivot around
the counterpoint of image and sound. THE ASTRONOMER’S DREAM does it most
successfully. Like it, PRECARIOUS GARDEN defamiliarizes conventional images:
home movies of a backyard garden, in this case. The screen is split, with
the relation between the two halves constantly changing. Sometimes they show
the same thing, different perspectives on it or completely unrelated images.
It is pleasantly disorienting. THE COLLECTOR and PASSAGE both wore out their
welcome before the end. PASSAGE echoes earlier and better Gehr films, like
EUREKA and SIDE/WALK/SHUTTLE, in its use of footage shot from an elevated
train window (in the former East Berlin). Compared to them, it’s clunky
and forced. THE COLLECTOR is drawn from still photos of early 20th-century
life, set to a busy soundtrack of waves, horns and clanking machines. Visually,
it combines stasis and montage, while the sound suggests clutter and movement.
One gets the point pretty quickly, though, and the nostalgic mood grows
tired.
TRUTH AND POETRY (Peter Kubelka, Austria)
Kubelka’s first film in 27 years, it suggests the influence of his
compatriot Martin Arnold’s Hollywood deconstructions. Using found footage
of commercials, he edits the outtakes together to make them look both funny
and creepy. A man brushes his hair in a mirror and then smiles; two women
eat chocolates with an expression of delight. These people are supposedly
enjoying themselves, but the actors portraying them are stuck in a monotonous
loop of repetitive gestures. intentionally or not, it’s a witty indictment
of advertising’s false promises of pleasure.
THE 10TH DISTRICT COURT: MOMENTS OF TRIAL
(Raymond Depardon, France) ***

Depardon’s entertaining documentary lands halfway between the rigor
of Frederick Wiseman and the obfuscations of reality TV. A portrait of
a few days in a French courtroom, it depicts excerpts from 25 trials. Alas,
it seems designed to make the defendants look like buffoons. Granted,
some would undoubtedly look bad under any circumstances, but Depardon plays
their baroque excuses and petulant shows of attitude for laughs. He also
encourages us to identify with the judge by cutting to her reaction when
defendants are being particularly exasperating. Not surprisingly, almost
all are found guilty, although we never learn the fate of the final one.
(It’s a crime in France to call a meter maid a bitch!) Luckily, Depardon does
cut deeper at times, especially in a domestic violence case and the trial
of a sociologist charged with possession of a knife. The man makes a decent
case that it doesn’t qualify as a weapon, although the giant chip on his
shoulder doesn’t help. A double feature with PERSONS OF INTEREST, Alison
Maclean and Tobias Perse’s documentary about Arabs and Muslims unjustly imprisoned
on suspicion of terrorism, would be instructive. Nevertheless, THE 10TH DISTRICT
COURT is often hilarious, even if I felt guilty as I laughed.

No distributor.THE HOLY GIRL (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina)
***1/2

Martel takes a story that could form the basis for made-for-Lifetime
trash and treats it with extreme grace and subtlety. During a week-long
medical convention, Dr. Jano (Carlos Belloso) rubs his crotch against
Amalia (Maria Alché) in a crowd in front of a music shop. Deeply
religious, the girl follows him around, convinced that her vocation may
lie in saving his soul. The plot emerges as much through framing
and blocking as big dramatic moments. Martel’s close-ups, in which faces
fill much of the screen, are extremely expressive. As in OR (MY TREASURE),
she often fragments her characters’ bodies by keeping a portion offscreen.
The film avoids demonizing Dr. Jano or making Catholicism look silly. As
THE HOLY GIRL progresses, it creates a hothouse atmosphere, leading to a
near-Hitchcockian level of tension and suspense. Yet it resists melodrama
and easy conclusions all the way through, ending with a shot that evokes
both isolation and friendship. Distributed by Fine Line Features. Opens in 2005.ROLLING FAMILY (Pablo Trapero, Argentina)
**

Would you enjoy spending a hot summer in a van with cranky senior citizens,
crying babies and a cute stray dog? Do you like Walter Salles’ films but
find them too edgy and challenging? If so, you’re the perfect audience
for this piece of crap. The Emperor’s New Indie Cred strikes again. If
the exact same script were filmed by an American sitcom hack rather than
a respected Argentine director, it would be more likely to turn up on the
Hallmark Channel than at film festivals. In it, an extended family goes
on the road to a wedding. Trapero’s background in neo-realism ensures that
the events are convincingly grating, but I preferred this story when it
was called NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION. I can understand why the NYFF selection
committee would pick a seriously flawed adventurous or provocative film,
but the rationale behind choosing ROLLING FAMILY escapes me. It’s too abrasive
to work as mindless entertainment and too dumb and clichéd to be
anything else. No distributor...yet. I’d imagine that it will roll towards
a Landmark theater eventually, though.THE WORLD (Jia Zhang Ke, China) **1/2

I seem to be alone in finding this a minor film - Jonathan Rosenbaum
has just proclaimed it his favorite of the year so far - so
take my qualms with a grain of sand if you’re a Jia fan. After a spell as
the unofficial poet laureate of backwater China, THE WORLD is set in
Beijing, where he now lives. (He’s also received government approval for
the first time.) However, he’s still portraying the anomie and disaffection
of Chinese youth, just in a different setting. It’s named after a Disneyland-style
theme park, which offers a simulation of the Eiffel Tower at one third
the height and a World Trade Center that’s still standing. A readymade
metaphor for China’s position in the world, it’s a bit facile. Travel and
emigration play a large role in the film: the most touching scene depicts
a Chinese and Russian woman who don’t speak each other’s languages trying
to converse. It’s also fascinated by cell phones, incorporating animation
based on text messages. All this emphasis on globalization and technology’s
inability to create a better life feels pat, like a generic Alienated Arthouse
Asians film made by a talented Jia disciple. At 143 minutes, it also feels
bloated - PLATFORM was longer and slower but better paced. The deeply unsatisfying
ending created the final twist in my ambivalence. No distributor.KEANE (Lodge Kerrigan) **1/2

There’s something bemusing about upper-middle-class festivalgoers paying
$15 to see a film about a mentally ill - albeit not homeless - man whose
real-life counterparts aren’t exactly in short supply on New York’s streets.
Still, I’ve got to give Kerrigan credit for his unfashionable, ongoing concern
with Americans living on the margins. KEANE starts off quite strong,
with the director auditioning to be the third Dardenne brother. His camera
tracks the movements of William Keane (Damian Lewis), an apparent schizophrenic
who believes that his daughter disappeared. He wanders around New York and
northern New Jersey’s train stations and bus terminals, hoping to see her.
Alas, KEANE turns out to be a more conventional film than its surface would
suggest. The notion of a bitter or troubled middle-aged person redeemed by
taking care of a child has been an arthouse-lite staple for the past decade:
it pops up in CENTRAL STATION, KOLYA and KIKUJIRO. Kerrigan hedges his bets
through disorienting camerawork, a lack of psychology, a menacing atmosphere
and an emphasis on ambiguity, but that storyline, parodied brilliantly in
BAD SANTA, still runs through his film. It leans a little too heavily on Lewis’
performance. While he’s impressive much of the time, especially when not
straining to mutter just loud enough to ensure we can all hear what he’s saying,
it ultimately feels like a stunt. At best, its mix of urban grit with
a deeper layer of sentimentality plays like a hyperbolic, jacked-up
riff on early Vittorio de Sica. The final scene’s lack of closure is a coy,
lazy gesture that doesn’t match the beauty of the similarly abrupt closing
shot of THE HOLY GIRL. As Michael Sicinski
wrote
, “challenging art films have their conventions too.”

No distributor.WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN (Hong Sang-soo,
South Korea) **1/2

Captivating yet frustrating, this ultimately feels like an interesting
failure. It revolves around the resonant concept of a trip back to a thirtysomething
man’s old stomping grounds. A filmmaker visits an old friend from college,
now a professor. As the two sit around a restaurant getting drunk, they
decide to look up a woman who loved both men. Hong’s direction is
precise and detached, using long takes and framing in which the characters
stand at the center of the frame. The world he describes is emotionally,
if not sexually, repressed, and everyone seems at least a little passive-aggressive
and nostalgic for the recent past. At the end, I was left with the feeling
that I’d spent an unenlightening 90 minutes watching the travails of a dull
jerk. Still, it looks like a masterpiece compared to the soporific, endless
Hungarian short that preceded it, apparently designed for everyone who thought
Tarkovsky’s films would be improved by T & A.

No distributor. CAFE LUMIERE (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Japan/Taiwan) ***

Hou’s latest, made in Japan as part of a tribute to Yasujiro Ozu, is an
improvement on MILLENNIUM MAMBO but hardly the equal of GOODBYE SOUTH, GOODBYE
or THE FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI. Still, he once again confirms his mastery of
mise-en-scene. Few directors use space so skillfully. The film’s aesthetic
is based on long takes and deep focus, with one’s attention constantly drawn
to the frame’s background and rewarded. The protagonist’s friend walks
around the subway recording ambient sound, a fitting metaphor for what Hou’s
trying to do here. He’s obviously more interested in observing life than
telling a story. That’s fine, but he’s nonetheless made a narrative film.
The plot, about a Japanese woman who doesn’t want to marry her Taiwanese
boyfriend even though he’s impregnated her, is muted and slight. Even when
his characters spend time “doing nothing,” as in GOODBYE, SOUTH GOODBYE and
MILLENNIUM MAMBO, Hou brings an implicit sociological or historical perspective.
That’s missing from CAFE LUMIERE, maybe because he’s working outside Taiwan.
An extremely modest and simple work, it might benefit from being pared down
even further.

No distributor.SARABAND (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden) **1/2

Impeccably written and acted, Bergman’s return to cinema - after 22 years
directing theater and a few made-for-TV projects - left me almost entirely
cold. A sequel to SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE, it’s rigidly structured: 10 episodes
- each consisting of a dialogue between 2 characters - with a prologue and
epilogue in which Liv Ullmann addresses the audience directly. Taking off
from an encounter between Marianne (Ullmann) and her ex-husband Johan (Erland
Josephson), it focuses more on the relationships - full of emotional manipulation
- between them, Johan’s son Henrik and Henrik’s daughter Karin. Almost the
whole film could easily be staged as a play. Bergman’s use of dissolves is
expressive enough to make one wish he utilized them more often. Film Forum’s
Bergman retrospective earlier this year helped clarify my feelings about
him: after the late ‘50s, the spontaneity and humor drained out of his work,
although he still had a few great films left. (These qualities did return
in his farewell to cinema, FANNY AND ALEXANDER.) SARABAND is full of intense
emotion, yet it’s stiff and inert. Even the colors, which suffer from
the fact that it was shot on video, are muted and muddy. Only in the
eighth part did I come close to being moved. I’m afraid that in ten years,
I’ll sound like a philistine panning Carl Dreyer’s GERTRUD in 1964, but this
late work suggests that Bergman’s going out with a whimper. IN THE PRESENCE
OF A CLOWN, a video shown at the 1997 NYFF, would have made a better coda
to his oeuvre. Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. Opens in 2005.